"My sexual
orientation is not a sickness to be healed or a sin to
be forgiven. My sexual orientation is a gift from my
Creator to be accepted, celebrated, and lived with
integrity."-ChristianGay.Com

"It is never legitimate to use the words of scripture to
promote a loveless agenda." -Right Rev. Dr. Peter Short / Moderator of United Church
of Canada

"The Bible contains six admonishments to homosexuals and
362 admonishments to heterosexuals. That doesn't mean
that God doesn't love heterosexuals. It's just that they
need more supervision." -Lynn Lavner

“Is being gay a sin?
No. Sins are acts that separate us from God and keep us
from loving our neighbors as ourselves. Being gay is not
a sin. Bullying is a sin. Being hateful to other people
is a sin. Putting yourself in the place of God to judge
others is a sin. Being gay is not.”

"It took the Catholic Church 359 years to admit that
they were wrong when they accused Galileo of heresy and
condemned him to death, unless he recanted that the
earth rotates around the sun. Since he wanted to live,
he was forced to deny the truth and agree with the
Church that the sun rotates around the earth, but he was
still placed under house arrest until his death. The
Church is powerful and has a history of pressuring
society and individuals to say and believe what the
Church thinks is right. They were wrong then and they
are wrong now regarding homosexuality. Let's hope it
doesn't take them that long this time to discover and
admit their error."-ChristianGay.Com

"The Scriptures have been misused to defend bloody
crusades and inquisitions; to support slavery,
apartheid, and segregation; to sanction the physical and
emotional abuse of women and children; to persecute Jews
and other non-Christian people of faith; to support the
holocaust of Hitler's Third Reich; to oppose medical
science; to condemn inter-racial marriage; to execute
women as witches; to excuse the violent racism of the Ku
Klux Klan; to mobilize militias, white supremacy and
neo-nazi movements; and to condone intolerance and
discrimination against sexual minorities. " -Mel White / Letter to Jerry Falwell

"There is nothing in the Bible or in my own theology
that would lead me to believe that God regards
homosexuality as sin. God is interested in our
relationships with ourselves, others, the things in our
lives, and with God. There is nothing in the mind of God
that could be against a loving, sexual relationship,
freely entered into, without coercion, among sincere
adults whether gay, bisexual or straight."-Dr. Slayton / Baptist Minister

"Some
argue that since homosexual behavior is unnatural, it
is contrary to the order of creation. Behind this
pronouncement are stereotypic definitions of masculinity
and femininity that reflect the rigid gender categories
of patriarchal society. There is nothing unnatural about
any shared love, even between two of the same gender, if
that experience calls both partners into a fuller state
of being. Contemporary research is uncovering new facts
that are producing a rising conviction that
homosexuality, far from being a sickness, sin,
perversion or unnatural act, is a healthy natural, and
affirming of human sexuality for some people. Findings
indicate that homosexuality is a given fact in the
nature of a significant portion of people, and that it
is unchangeable."-John Shelby Spong / Episcopalian Bishop

"Our sexual orientation is a given, something we
discover about ourselves. Some might say it is a gift
from God. How one relates to others (caring or
exploiting) is the source of sin."-Bishop Wood / Episcopalian

"If God had wanted me otherwise, He would have created
me otherwise." -Johann von Goethe

Desmond Tutu: My
God is Not Homophobic
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, famous for his role in ending
Apartheid in South Africa, has said that he would rather
go to Hell if he discovered that God was homophobic. “I
would refuse to go to a homophobic Heaven,” Archbishop
Tutu said at the launch of a new LGBTQ global public
education campaign by the United Nations Human Rights
Office. “I would not worship a God who is homophobic and
that is how deeply I feel about this."

Archbishop Tutu, a
Nobel Prize winner further remarked, “I can't for the
life of me imagine that God will say, I will punish
you because you are black, you should have been white; I
will punish you because you are a woman, you should have
been a man; I will punish you because you are
homosexual, you ought to have been heterosexual. I
can't for the life of me believe that is how God sees
things.”

Gene Robinson was the
first openly gay bishop in the US Episcopal Church. His
ordination as a bishop of the New Hampshire diocese in
2003 divided the global Anglican community. In the US,
hundreds of parishes broke away from the Episcopal
Church (the US branch of Anglicanism) in protest,
forming a new Anglican Church in North America. Bishop
Gene Robinson became a symbol of the LGBTQ rights
movement and an advocate for equal marriage.

Gene Robinson was born in
1947 in Lexington, Kentucky. As a schoolboy, he began to
realize that he might be different. He suspected he was
gay but said it was not something to be open about.
Bishop Robinson says he had relationships with women but
admitted that he was also attracted to men.

He met Isabella Martin
during an internship at the University of Vermont. He
says a month into their relationship, he explained his
concerns about his sexuality. But, never the less, they
married in 1972 and he took a job as a curate in New
Jersey before they moved to New Hampshire in 1975. The
couple had two daughters, Jamee and Ella. In 1985, after
seeking counseling, he and his wife decided they should
separate. He went public with his sexuality and they
divorced.

18 months
later, Bishop Robinson began to date Mark Andrew, who
subsequently moved to New Hampshire. They married in
2003. In 2014, after 25 years together, they divorced.
Bishop Robinson retired in 2012.

Denise Eger is an American Reform rabbi. In March 2015
she became president of the Central Conference of
American Rabbis, the largest and oldest rabbinical
organization in North America. She is the first
openly gay person to hold that position.

While
studying to become a rabbi during the 1980s in New York
City, Denise Eger started a group for gay and lesbian
students, holding meetings far from campus. At the time,
there were few prospects for out lesbian rabbis, a
lesson Eger would learn personally. No one would hire
her. But she found her calling at a synagogue created as
a religious refuge for gays, Beth Chayim Chadashim in
Los Angeles, the world’s first gay and lesbian synagogue
to be recognized by Reform Judaism. It was a road that
led her to found Kol Ami, a welcoming and jubilant
Jewish community that is open to all.

Since then, the Reform Jewish movement (Eger’s lifelong
spiritual home) has undergone a radical transformation
on LGBTQ issues and now fully embraces the community.

Eger has
been honored for her HIV/AIDS work and is a highly
regarded expert on Judaism and LGBTQ civil rights. She
is a noted author contributing to anthologies such as
“Torah Queeries,” “Lesbian Rabbis,” “Twice Blessed,” and
“Conflicting Visions: Contemporary Debates in Reform
Judaism.” She wrote the piece “Creating Opportunities
for the ‘Other’: The Ordination of Women as a Turning
Point for LGBTQ Jews”, which appears in the book “The
Sacred Calling: Four Decades of Women in the Rabbinate,”
published in 2016.

--Catholics support marriage equality at
54%, which is higher than the national average.

--Individual Evangelical Christians are
consulted in the media at a higher rate than their
presence in the population would warrant (34% of media
coverage versus 26% of the U.S. population).

--Over half of Roman Catholics consulted
in the media presented negative messages about LGBTQ
issues, despite the fact that 71% of American Catholics
support civil marriage equality and 73% of lay Catholics
support anti-discrimination laws that would protect
LGBTQ people in the workplace and in public
accommodations.

--African-American church leaders
increasingly support LGBTQ equality. According to the
latest research, fully one-third of African-American
Protestants support marriage equality.

--Faith groups have taken the lead in
addressing LGBTQ youth homelessness.

--The
Orthodox Jewish world is slowly backing away from its
fierce opposition to LGBTQ people.

Troy Perry

Rev. Troy
Perry is the founder of Metropolitan Community Church, a
Christian denomination with a special affirming ministry
with the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer
communities, in Los Angeles in 1968.

Perry felt called to offer a place for gay people to
worship God freely. Perry put an advertisement in The
Advocate magazine announcing a worship service designed
for gays in Los Angeles. Twelve people turned up on
October 6, 1968 for the first service, and "Nine were my
friends who came to console me and to laugh, and three
came as a result of the ad." After six weeks of services
in his living room, the congregation shifted to a
women's club, an auditorium, a church, and finally to a
theater that could hold 600 within several months. In
1971, their own building was dedicated with over a
thousand members in attendance.

Being outspoken has caused several MCC buildings to be
targeted for arson, including the original location in
Los Angeles. Perry's theology has been described as
conservative, but social action was a high priority from
the beginning of the establishment of the denomination.
Perry performed the first public same sex unions in the
United States as early as 1968 and ordained women as
pastors as early as 1972. MCC has more than 200
congregations in 33 countries.

Baptist / Dr. Stayton - Absolutely not! There is nothing
in the Bible or in my own theology that would lead me to
believe that God regards homosexuality as sin. God is
interested in our relationships with ourselves, others,
the things in our lives, and with God. There is nothing
in the mind of God that could be against a loving,
sexual relationship, freely entered into, without
coercion, among sincere adults whether gay, bisexual or
straight.

Episcopalian / Bishop John Shelby Spong - Some argue that
since homosexual behavior is "unnatural," it is contrary
to the order of creation. Behind this pronouncement are
stereotypic definitions of masculinity and femininity
that reflect the rigid gender categories of patriarchal
society. There is nothing unnatural about any shared
love, even between two of the same gender, if that
experience calls both partners into a fuller state of
being. Contemporary research is uncovering new facts
that are producing a rising conviction that
homosexuality, far from being a sickness, sin,
perversion or unnatural act, is a healthy natural, and
affirming of human sexuality for some people. Findings
indicate that homosexuality is a given fact in the
nature of a significant portion of people, and that it
is unchangeable. Our prejudice rejects people or
things outside our understanding. But the God of
creation speaks and declares, "I have looked out on
everything I have made and 'behold it (is) very
good'."(Gen.1:31) The work of God in Christ says that we
are loved, valued, redeemed, and counted as precious no
matter how we might be valued by a prejudiced world.

Episcopalian / Bishop Wood - No. Our sexual orientation
is a given, something we discover about ourselves. Some
might say "a gift from God." How one relates to others
(caring or exploiting) is the source of sin.

Judaism / Rabbi Lazar - First of all, I do not know what
God thinks. In my opinion, homosexuality is not a sin,
but an alternate lifestyle. In my opinion, homosexuality
by itself is not immoral. When sex is used to corrupt,
for prurient and/or exploitative purposes or selfish
reasons or to hurt someone else, this is immoral.

Presbyterian / Dr. Edwards - God does not regard
homosexuality as a sin any more than heterosexuality.
Sin is a lack of respect or love for God. It is a lack
of love or respect for other persons. Whether gay or
straight, therefore, one may sin against God or others.
But God forgives us when we sin and strengthens us in
resisting sin. We are led by God's forgiving love to
become more respectful and loving toward God and others,
even those we don't "like."

Presbyterian / Rev. Holfelder - No, I do not think that
God regards homosexuality as a sin. I believe that one's
sexual preference is first and foremost a matter of
biology (creation) and only secondarily a matter of
choice (responsibility). Since I also believe that all
God creates is good, I conclude that human sexuality (not
a matter of choice for anyone) is good, whether that
sexual expression be heterosexual or homosexual.

Roman Catholic / Sister Ford - Two truths are especially
relevant in thinking this through. First we have a
theological point. God, the one who has made all of
creation, loves and cherishes all creatures without
exception. Second, modern psychology shows us that
homosexual orientation is set by age five or six. Most
psychologists agree that it is not a matter of choice;
whether orientation is inborn as some think, or acquired
very early, as others say. How then could an all-loving
God possibly violate Divine nature and regard
homosexuals as "sinners?"

Unitarian
Universalist / Dr. Schulz - I do not believe that God
regards homosexuality as a sin. In the first place, of
course, I do not believe in an anthropomorphic god who
defines or delineates sinful behavior. But even if I
did, I cannot believe that such a God would reject any
of His/Her children on the basis of their affectional
orientations. If He/She did, such a God would not be one
to whom I would want to pay homage.

United Church of Christ / Dr. Lebacqz - What god DOES
regard as a sin is oppression, injustice, disrespect for
persons. This sin, then, is homophobia, gay-bashing,
discriminatory legislation toward lesbians and gays,
refusal to include lesbian/gay/bisexual people into our
churches and communities. To force ANY people, whether
for reasons of race, age, or sexual orientation, into a
"ghetto" - this is a sin.

United Church of Christ / Dr. Nelson - I am convinced
that our sexuality and our sexual orientations, whatever
they may be, are a gift from God. Sexual sin does not
reside in our orientations, but rather in expressing our
sexuality in ways that harm, oppress, or use others for
our own selfish gratification. When we express ourselves
sexually in ways that are loving and just, faithful and
responsible, then I am convinced that God celebrates our
sexuality, whatever our orientation may be.

United Methodist / Bishop Wheatley - Of course not! The
preponderance of evidence now available identifies
homosexuality to be as natural a sexual orientation for
the majority of persons. Homosexuality is an authentic
condition of being with which some persons are endowed
(a gift of God, if you please), not an optional sexual
lifestyle which they have willfully, whimsically or
sinfully chosen. Certainly one's sexuality (heterosexual or homosexual) may be acted out in
behaviors that are sinful: brutal, exploitative,
selfish, superficial. But just as surely, one's
homosexual orientation as well as another's heterosexual
orientation may be acted out in ways that are beautiful:
tender, considerate, mutual, responsible, loyal,
profound.

So, you think
homosexuality is sinful? And therefore gays should not
be allowed to marry? Why?

--Because Jesus says
so. Not true. According to the four Gospels in the
New Testament (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John), Jesus never
uttered a word about same-sex relationships.

--Because the Old
Testament says so. The Old Testament also says it’s
sinful to eat shellfish, to wear clothes woven with
different fabrics, and to eat pork. Should we still live
by ancient Old Testament laws? If so, have fun living
your sexist, chauvinistic, judgmental, xenophobic
lifestyle choice. While you’re living your life
according to the archaic rules of the Bronze Age, the
civilized world will advance and progress without you.

--Because the New
Testament says so. The original language of the New
Testament (including the Letters of Saint Paul) actually
refers to male prostitution, molestation, and
promiscuity, not committed same-sex relationships. Paul
may have spoken against homosexuality, but he also said
that women should be silent and never assume authority
over a man. Should modern-day churches really live by
all of Paul’s values?

--Because God made
Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. That was when the
earth was not populated. There are now almost 7 billion
people on the earth. Populating the earth clearly is no
longer a challenge.

--Because the Bible
clearly defines marriage as one-man-one woman.
Wrong. The Bible also defines marriage as
one-man-many-women. It also defines marriage as one man
with many wives and many concubines. It also defines
marriage as a rapist and his victim. It also defines
marriage as a conquering soldier and a female prisoner
of war.

--Okay then, because
the whole idea of gay relationships disgusts me.
Thank you for being honest. However, an entire
population of people should not have their families
discriminated against just because you think gay sex is
icky. It’s time for you to grow up.